This is a very good post, but I think you’re committing another error that Democrats need to correct if they want to come out on top here: you treat “immigration” and “illegal immigration” as synonyms.
Democrats often tie themselves in knots trying to come up with reasons voters saying “I’m fine with immigrants, but they need to come in the right way” are lying and are actually just nasty racists - but a lot of those voters really are being honest!
You can’t go on forever about “law abiding migrants” while ignoring the elephant in the room that their very presence is inherently unlawful. Maybe it shouldn’t be! I’m actually largely on your side that immigrants are an economic and cultural good thing, and we should make legal economic migration easier than it currently is - but you need to actually make that argument, and spend political capital to change immigration law!
At the end of the day, yeah, you can probably get some moderate voters to flip back due to Trump’s overreach and the bad optics of overly militaristic raids. But you’re going to run into a hard limit because I think most voters still believe that deportation is an appropriate consequence for being in the country illegally. You can say it should be more humane, involve more due process. But “defund ICE, declare sanctuary cities” is always going to be a hard sell.
My problem with the "I'm fine with immigrants they just need to come in the right way" is that no one has any idea what the legal immigration pathways even are. And with MAGA it's usually an outright lie, they immediately pivot to the "great replacement" stuff which by definition is anti legal immigration as well.
I was talking to someone with this sentiment the other day who was shocked to learn that recent PhD grads only have 60 days to find a job before they are kicked out of the country. I am 100% confident it will not cross their mind during the next election. Making the legal immigration system function properly is just not something that most voters care about.
“With MAGA it’s usually an outright lie”. With the voters you can and need to win, it’s not (for example I’ve known a lot of first and second generation immigrants that are extremely anti-illegal immigration). Hell it’s basically the sentiment in the Obama quote in this piece.
You’re kind of proving my point - even when directly challenged on it, you don’t make an argument for improving the legal pathways, you just concede that they are currently hard and, by implication, therefore we should accept lawlessness in immigration. That’s part of why Trump is winning the issue.
You didn’t, but it’s implied - you’re dismissive that anyone *actually* only cares about illegal immigration. They are either MAGA xenophobes or people ignorant of how hard legal immigration is.
And what’s the point of talking about how hard legal immigration is except to imply we should be accepting of illegal immigrants?
Some of the ICE arrests have been specifically of people who were *trying* to "do it the right way," like showing up for an asylum hearing or visa renewal as prescribed by law.
And that’s bad. But you should still distinguish between immigration in general and illegal immigration in particular, because a lot of voters actually care about “the rule of law”, not to mention Dems are quick to call on the rule of law in other contexts.
“Asylum hearings” I would quibble with because it seems pretty clear to me that the asylum system was heavily abused during the Biden administration to be effectively a free pass visa for a couple years, and that an extremely high percentage of asylum claims are knowingly meritless.
Well, we don't know if they're meritless until they have the hearing. That *is* the rule of law. If we were properly funding our own system, the hearings could be within days not years in most cases.
There is no plausible plan on the table, nor has there ever been, to handle the volume Biden let in with individual hearings in a reasonable timetable. Certainly Biden made no significant efforts to do so until his poll numbers started looking bad in 24.
And yeah, I think realistically we do know a lot of these claims are meritless without the hearing. These are the same people from the same places who’ve always been (understandable and often sympathetic) economic migrants, not refugees. And realistically we know that a high percentage of these claimants are going to disappear into established migrant communities and ignore their hearing dates. And realistically we know that once they are there, people waving Mexican flags will set shit on fire while Karen Bass sobs about how integral these people are to the fabric of her city if anyone tries to remove them.
That’s the fundamental problem here, there’s quite a bit of “piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining” by Democrats who seem to think this is a winning strategy compared to openly advocating for their actual preference, vastly increased legal immigration. It’s not winning anymore.
Every 5 th child in Ca has 1 parent who is here illegally. I agree that we should close the borders, but breaking families is a very bad idea. Those who work and pay taxes need to be legalized, criminals out, border closed, problem solved. But carefully with courts and without raids.
I think the problems with democrats is that they talk slogans. Putting real faces on the facts is very powerful, but somehow its a fires we see rather than families torn apart.
And we need to pass legislation that extends status to family members! We have a system for handling these things and Dems haven’t done it. They haven’t done it, and this is the consequence.
Biden could have spent his political capital on expanding paths to legal residency, via legislation, but he did not.
I would also add- please don't also fly Palestinian flags. Unless the goal is to hurt the Palestinian cause. In which case, okay, clever strategy, but please still don't do that.
This happens because the sane left leaning people are scared to death of being set upon by their own psychos. They tend to share the same urban environments and no one wants their nonprofit or art gallery threatened. Even here, the throat-clearing to make absolutely sure no one sees you as a Trump sympathizer! Right wingers have psychos too, but Republicans aren’t nearly as worried about actual confrontation from them (or ostracism from others if they take a moderate position).
It’s going to take another huge defeat or two for Democrats to shake these folks.
The logic I’ve heard behind why protestors (rioters?) are setting Waymo cars on fire is that Waymo shares the camera data with police so therefore they have no choice but to destroy the cars when they see them so that the camera data can’t be used by police to target them.
I’m not particularly sold on that strategy myself but that’s the reasoning I’ve heard.
Great post! Captures much of my sentiment exactly.
Whenever events like these happen, it is very tempting to think that maybe all these magic charts saying that immigrants are worth trillions of dollars, immigrants never take American jobs, immigrants work very hard and respect America - maybe all of that is misleading or inaccurate or massaged data that does not reflect the real world.
Yes it is tempting to think that -- if you're tempted to reach your opinions based on vibes and denigrate the entire field of statistics as just "magic charts". But "tempting" doesn't equal "good" or "true".
If one wants to challenge the merits of immigration solely with numbers, than the pro-immigration side already has a significant disparity to address in the form of stagnating Canadian and British economies, both of which have seen very large levels of immigration.
Other people are interested in doing data based analyses of why immigration in America has deleterious effects (https://arctotherium.substack.com/p/nonlinear-ethnic-niches) - but one imagines their efforts to produce charts proving this was based on their initial observations that the vibes were wrong.
Some of what you see in the street isn't exactly anyone's political strategy it's just reactive rage. They're not messaging anything but "oppressing people costs."
Also, while I understand the point about optics, you should know that waving a Mexican flag in this context probably isn't about nationalism or the Mexican state at all, it's about personal and community identity. Think of it as akin to rainbow flags at a protest against the police killing of an LGBT person.
This is also true re: online lib discourse. of course both rioting and cancel culture are bad, but I don't know why we'd ever have expected relevant actors to act in accordance with the actual strategic interests of the Democratic party, since they're just people doing things. I don't think this justifies rioting and I still hate them for these and other reasons, but we should also not be surprised when emotional people do stupid things, regardless of the reasons that they're emotional
It is incorrect to try to analyze the behavior of masses as being strategic or based on long-term initiatives. Bluntly, *mobs do not behave this way*. Why are people in California torching cars and throwing rocks at police and waving Mexican flags? Because they want to, or they see others doing these things already, or because they want to one-up those already expressing violent behaviors
This is why rioting is dangerous. Large mobs can very quickly spiral out of control because they inherently do not follow central authorities, they follow randomly-propagating group behavioral patterns. In inciting or latching onto Mob violence, democrats are tying their movement to a thing *they cannot control*, and are thus making a huge gamble.
This is why the expectation is that both political parties always condemn violent rioting. In portraying riots as “legitimate” during the Summer of Love, the Democratic Party seriously disrupted political norms and opened the window both for future riots, and for “tit-for-tat” protest support by Republicans which culminated in January 6th.
In short, the correct question is not “Why do democrats do this?”, it’s “Why won’t democrats condemn this?”
Real question: How do the good protesters keep the bad ones away? I really don't know and my post is mainly venting frustration at morons who ruin the whole thing without providing any answers. Your post suggests that perhaps organizers should not convene protests at all, given the likelihood that some idiots will show up and mostly ruin the whole thing by setting things on fire. The implication may be that the politics of the protesters creates an environment in these kinds of things are bound to happen. If so, then all of us need to change to create a different environment.
This is a very good post, but I think you’re committing another error that Democrats need to correct if they want to come out on top here: you treat “immigration” and “illegal immigration” as synonyms.
Democrats often tie themselves in knots trying to come up with reasons voters saying “I’m fine with immigrants, but they need to come in the right way” are lying and are actually just nasty racists - but a lot of those voters really are being honest!
You can’t go on forever about “law abiding migrants” while ignoring the elephant in the room that their very presence is inherently unlawful. Maybe it shouldn’t be! I’m actually largely on your side that immigrants are an economic and cultural good thing, and we should make legal economic migration easier than it currently is - but you need to actually make that argument, and spend political capital to change immigration law!
At the end of the day, yeah, you can probably get some moderate voters to flip back due to Trump’s overreach and the bad optics of overly militaristic raids. But you’re going to run into a hard limit because I think most voters still believe that deportation is an appropriate consequence for being in the country illegally. You can say it should be more humane, involve more due process. But “defund ICE, declare sanctuary cities” is always going to be a hard sell.
My problem with the "I'm fine with immigrants they just need to come in the right way" is that no one has any idea what the legal immigration pathways even are. And with MAGA it's usually an outright lie, they immediately pivot to the "great replacement" stuff which by definition is anti legal immigration as well.
I was talking to someone with this sentiment the other day who was shocked to learn that recent PhD grads only have 60 days to find a job before they are kicked out of the country. I am 100% confident it will not cross their mind during the next election. Making the legal immigration system function properly is just not something that most voters care about.
“With MAGA it’s usually an outright lie”. With the voters you can and need to win, it’s not (for example I’ve known a lot of first and second generation immigrants that are extremely anti-illegal immigration). Hell it’s basically the sentiment in the Obama quote in this piece.
You’re kind of proving my point - even when directly challenged on it, you don’t make an argument for improving the legal pathways, you just concede that they are currently hard and, by implication, therefore we should accept lawlessness in immigration. That’s part of why Trump is winning the issue.
Where do I say we should accept lawlessness in immigration?
You didn’t, but it’s implied - you’re dismissive that anyone *actually* only cares about illegal immigration. They are either MAGA xenophobes or people ignorant of how hard legal immigration is.
And what’s the point of talking about how hard legal immigration is except to imply we should be accepting of illegal immigrants?
Some of the ICE arrests have been specifically of people who were *trying* to "do it the right way," like showing up for an asylum hearing or visa renewal as prescribed by law.
And that’s bad. But you should still distinguish between immigration in general and illegal immigration in particular, because a lot of voters actually care about “the rule of law”, not to mention Dems are quick to call on the rule of law in other contexts.
“Asylum hearings” I would quibble with because it seems pretty clear to me that the asylum system was heavily abused during the Biden administration to be effectively a free pass visa for a couple years, and that an extremely high percentage of asylum claims are knowingly meritless.
Well, we don't know if they're meritless until they have the hearing. That *is* the rule of law. If we were properly funding our own system, the hearings could be within days not years in most cases.
There is no plausible plan on the table, nor has there ever been, to handle the volume Biden let in with individual hearings in a reasonable timetable. Certainly Biden made no significant efforts to do so until his poll numbers started looking bad in 24.
And yeah, I think realistically we do know a lot of these claims are meritless without the hearing. These are the same people from the same places who’ve always been (understandable and often sympathetic) economic migrants, not refugees. And realistically we know that a high percentage of these claimants are going to disappear into established migrant communities and ignore their hearing dates. And realistically we know that once they are there, people waving Mexican flags will set shit on fire while Karen Bass sobs about how integral these people are to the fabric of her city if anyone tries to remove them.
That’s the fundamental problem here, there’s quite a bit of “piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining” by Democrats who seem to think this is a winning strategy compared to openly advocating for their actual preference, vastly increased legal immigration. It’s not winning anymore.
Every 5 th child in Ca has 1 parent who is here illegally. I agree that we should close the borders, but breaking families is a very bad idea. Those who work and pay taxes need to be legalized, criminals out, border closed, problem solved. But carefully with courts and without raids.
I think the problems with democrats is that they talk slogans. Putting real faces on the facts is very powerful, but somehow its a fires we see rather than families torn apart.
And we need to pass legislation that extends status to family members! We have a system for handling these things and Dems haven’t done it. They haven’t done it, and this is the consequence.
Biden could have spent his political capital on expanding paths to legal residency, via legislation, but he did not.
I would also add- please don't also fly Palestinian flags. Unless the goal is to hurt the Palestinian cause. In which case, okay, clever strategy, but please still don't do that.
This happens because the sane left leaning people are scared to death of being set upon by their own psychos. They tend to share the same urban environments and no one wants their nonprofit or art gallery threatened. Even here, the throat-clearing to make absolutely sure no one sees you as a Trump sympathizer! Right wingers have psychos too, but Republicans aren’t nearly as worried about actual confrontation from them (or ostracism from others if they take a moderate position).
It’s going to take another huge defeat or two for Democrats to shake these folks.
Yes. Normalize sit-ins again. It's hard not to sympathize with someone who is being dragged away by the police for just sitting there.
The logic I’ve heard behind why protestors (rioters?) are setting Waymo cars on fire is that Waymo shares the camera data with police so therefore they have no choice but to destroy the cars when they see them so that the camera data can’t be used by police to target them.
I’m not particularly sold on that strategy myself but that’s the reasoning I’ve heard.
Great post! Captures much of my sentiment exactly.
They think "we don't want the cops to id us" makes it _better?_
Whenever events like these happen, it is very tempting to think that maybe all these magic charts saying that immigrants are worth trillions of dollars, immigrants never take American jobs, immigrants work very hard and respect America - maybe all of that is misleading or inaccurate or massaged data that does not reflect the real world.
Yes it is tempting to think that -- if you're tempted to reach your opinions based on vibes and denigrate the entire field of statistics as just "magic charts". But "tempting" doesn't equal "good" or "true".
If one wants to challenge the merits of immigration solely with numbers, than the pro-immigration side already has a significant disparity to address in the form of stagnating Canadian and British economies, both of which have seen very large levels of immigration.
Other people are interested in doing data based analyses of why immigration in America has deleterious effects (https://arctotherium.substack.com/p/nonlinear-ethnic-niches) - but one imagines their efforts to produce charts proving this was based on their initial observations that the vibes were wrong.
Some of what you see in the street isn't exactly anyone's political strategy it's just reactive rage. They're not messaging anything but "oppressing people costs."
Also, while I understand the point about optics, you should know that waving a Mexican flag in this context probably isn't about nationalism or the Mexican state at all, it's about personal and community identity. Think of it as akin to rainbow flags at a protest against the police killing of an LGBT person.
*most
This is also true re: online lib discourse. of course both rioting and cancel culture are bad, but I don't know why we'd ever have expected relevant actors to act in accordance with the actual strategic interests of the Democratic party, since they're just people doing things. I don't think this justifies rioting and I still hate them for these and other reasons, but we should also not be surprised when emotional people do stupid things, regardless of the reasons that they're emotional
I don't complètely agréé but at least it's a somewhat balanced view.
It is incorrect to try to analyze the behavior of masses as being strategic or based on long-term initiatives. Bluntly, *mobs do not behave this way*. Why are people in California torching cars and throwing rocks at police and waving Mexican flags? Because they want to, or they see others doing these things already, or because they want to one-up those already expressing violent behaviors
This is why rioting is dangerous. Large mobs can very quickly spiral out of control because they inherently do not follow central authorities, they follow randomly-propagating group behavioral patterns. In inciting or latching onto Mob violence, democrats are tying their movement to a thing *they cannot control*, and are thus making a huge gamble.
This is why the expectation is that both political parties always condemn violent rioting. In portraying riots as “legitimate” during the Summer of Love, the Democratic Party seriously disrupted political norms and opened the window both for future riots, and for “tit-for-tat” protest support by Republicans which culminated in January 6th.
In short, the correct question is not “Why do democrats do this?”, it’s “Why won’t democrats condemn this?”
I had the same reaction to the violent and destructive aspects of the mostly peaceful protests. https://www.activevoice.us/p/dear-morons-the-local-police-are.
Real question: How do the good protesters keep the bad ones away? I really don't know and my post is mainly venting frustration at morons who ruin the whole thing without providing any answers. Your post suggests that perhaps organizers should not convene protests at all, given the likelihood that some idiots will show up and mostly ruin the whole thing by setting things on fire. The implication may be that the politics of the protesters creates an environment in these kinds of things are bound to happen. If so, then all of us need to change to create a different environment.